Ableton

The Ableton story is exemplary for a successful start-up company. Whilst developing the product back in 1998 Ableton won the prize for "Best multimedia start-up" by Germanys Federal Ministry of Economics and Technologies and could finanz the founding of the company with money from the FUTOUR support program.The Ableton AG was brought to life by the software engineer and dedicated musician Gerhard Behles (Monolake) and Bernd Roggendorf, a brilliant analyst. Both of them were working for the Berlin based software office Native Instruments at that time. Their goal was to create software able to make the studio (computer) truly mobile for free improvisation, live on stage.

A very important step was to bring Jan Bohl into the team. The business mastermind of the Ableton AG made it possible to raise funds, even in the difficult economic period that was omnipresent at that time. By May 2001 a investor was found and things started rolling. Together with the innovation trust given by the land of Berlin and a technology based venture capital company, enough resources could be set free to fire a international marketing campaign, and that was the beginning of Ableton´s success.

Ableton's goal is to provide musicians a powerful software, giving the creative mind enough time and space to concentrate on the music rather than on the technology.

By the end of 2001 Ableton was able to launch Ableton 1 to the drooling mass of producers and DJs that hat been waiting to get there hands on it for so long. This was the world's first live, stage proof audio sequencer, offering a great variety of sound modulation, more or less making the computer an instrument of its own.

Meanwhile Ableton's engineers have been upgrading as if there where no tomorrow, by September 2006 Ableton 6 hit the market and this monster even put some of the traditional software to shame.